Closing Archives - A Bugged Life

Bad news for the relatively huge blogging community of i.PH. Straight from Joel Disini’s mouth, i.PH is closing its blogging service. He’s giving bloggers 6 months to export their blog posts to other services.

Unfortunately, he said that he will be closing down i.ph soon so it would be best for me to start copy pasting all my posts and blog files. I couldn’t believe it. He said i.ph is no longer making profit and he’s giving us bloggers around 6 months before it fully shuts down.

Well, it was bound to happen. I’ve talked to many friends working for this company, (the mother organization owns the rights to the .ph registrar) and I’ve observed that while there were so many great ideas in the boiler room (i.e. mirroring services like SquareSpace, premium services, etc) none of these ever shipped. And in this industry, shipping is really important.

And it’s really not just about i.PH itself but the presence of so many other great blogging platforms — Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, SquareSpace.. competition is fast improving services while domain registration and hosting is getting cheaper by the day.

Thus far there is no official word on the i.PH blog. This piece of information comes from an encounter with Disini. If the news is 100% true (and it looks like it is), sad to see it go. Here’s a way to go out with a bang: have the community do one huge “transfer” party where everyone exports their blogs at the same time to other services.

UPDATE: I got something in the mail today — it’s from my former managing editor Alora Guerrero. She told me she’d be moving on to T3 after her career with MANUAL Magazine when it closed. I’ve moved on as well and Alora finally announces her position with T3 Online (she sent this on April 1 2009 and no, this is not an April Fools joke).

T3 will still be around but in a better online format. The magazine will still be around, but only for three times a year. So this is the first time in Philippine history where a magazine has claimed that the print edition will support the online edition 🙂

Original Post Follows:

If you’re reading this and you’re working in the same small circle that is the publishing industry, you might have heard the recent move of Summit to close T3, Marie Claire and Seventeen. Three really good foreign franchise titles closing down.

If you’re thinking that this is a “print is dead” piece, it isn’t. I’m not fond of writing posts of that sort. And truth is, it isn’t about print being dead — it’s about the cost of expensive franchise licenses, at least for the better part. This isn’t the first time it happened. Summit closed UK franchise Gamesmaster in 2006. Hinge Inquirer closed PC Magazine Philippines as well. Eventually of course, PC Magazine closed their print edition and are now purely online.

Such is life. As a contributor to several local mags, I’m not one to argue on business decisions. I will say this though — It is rare to see the opposite situation – where a local title becomes such a phenomenal hit that it qualifies for franchising (take our closest example, C! Magazine) and distributed regionally.

At the end of the day, the industry’s editorial circle is small enough that we’ve all probably done the rounds. Beyond the business decisions which us writers would rather not be involved in (leave it to management!), it will always be about letting a bit of blood (just a bit!) drip and mark the medium that we write for. A magazine is nothing but the mirror of the staff. 🙂

All is not lost however, for there are plans to move T3 to its proper local place — online. I know that this will be exciting for Vince, Ed, and other friends who were invited to join the team. As for Seventeen and Marie Claire, the female titles are already invested in Summit’s Female Network and GirlTalk forums. It’s just sad to see the glossy go.

Farewell T3, Marie Claire and Seventeen. Thanks for a great run. Especially you, Marie Claire — you had the most interesting features. I always looked for you in the barber shop.